


begging at happiness' door

by whiplash



Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Self-Harm, Threesome - M/M/F, Whump, bad language
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-02
Updated: 2014-10-02
Packaged: 2018-02-19 14:44:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2392160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiplash/pseuds/whiplash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nathan's convinced that the Troubles are back. Duke and Audrey aren't so sure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	begging at happiness' door

> _Yes, it is true that I have stood_   
>  _and begged at happiness' door_   
>  _and wept when I was given nought_   
>  _and all was empty as before._
> 
> _Yes, it is true that all's compelled._   
>  _But is it worth less then?_   
>  _One meaning in our song is held:_   
>  _to make our fate a friend._
> 
> _ \- Compelled, Karin Boye _

Duke meets her at the door, a silent and grim spectre.  
  
She draws in a breath to ask what's wrong but he shakes his head, the _'not yet'_ unspoken but still tangible between them.  Ignoring the urgent whispers in the back of her head -- _why had Duke called her, why was he home so early, why wasn't Nathan there_ \-- she follows him down the narrow hallway to their living room.

Nathan's by the window, so tense that his body's nearly vibrating. He has his arms wrapped around his upper body, hugging himself as if that's the only thing holding him together. The whole scene reminds her so much of the way the Chief had died that, for a moment, she freezes in the doorway.  Glancing around the room she automatically searches for, and finds, clues. Little things which have changed since she left that morning. The half-drawn curtains. The shattered clay pot. The arm-chair pushed to the side. The content of the first aid box spread out on the table.  
  
"Who's hurt?" she demands, looking from one to the other. Duke shakes his head, still so strangely silent. It scares her as much as the way Nathan's holding himself. When she comes up with nothing -- no bruises, no blood, no hint of white bandages peeking out of their clothing -- she feels her fear blossoming into anger.  
  
"Somebody better start talking to me," she snaps, turning to Nathan. "Now."  
  
"They're back," he says, voice like gravel.  
  
She doesn't get it. Not even when she sees how hard he's digging his fingers into his arms.  
  
"What's back?"  
  
"The Troubles," Duke says, finally breaking the silence. "He thinks the Troubles are back."  
  
xxx  
  
Nathan hears them talking, but the words mean nothing.  
  
He's shivering, his skin tight with goose bumps and his jaw clamped tight to prevent his teeth from chattering. Duke had tried to wrap him up in a blanket earlier, but Nathan had refused. Even the cold is better than what waits for him in the future. Something inside of him keens at the very thought of what he knows to be coming and he squeezes himself even tighter to keep the sound from emerging.  
  
He's not ready. He's not prepared. He'd thought They were gone forever.  
  
He should have known better.  
  
xxx  
  
"He's finally gone and cracked," Duke says, refusing to meet her eyes.  
  
Or maybe refusing to take his eyes off Nathan. She still hasn't figured out exactly what's happened --a large part of her still struggling to accept that something could have happened at all, here, in the safe haven of their home, on a lazy Sunday morning when Duke and Nathan ought to be out fishing -- but it's obvious that Nathan's not the only one affected. She hasn't seen Duke so messed up, so angry and scared, since before the Troubles ended. Which brings her back to Nathan's claim.  
  
"You don't believe him?"  
  
"The Troubles are gone," Duke snaps. "You, of all people, should know that."  
  
Audrey does. She knows it, but maybe she doesn't always believe it. Doesn't always believe her own happy ending. Some part of her still thinks that the story's meant to end in blood and death and loss, not elbows knocking together at a crowded dinner table and too many odd socks in the laundry room. She steps around Duke, inserting herself into his line of sight. His eyes are hard, the crow's feet around them carved deep and the grey at his temples making him seem much older than forty. She reaches out a hand and curves her fingers around his face. Tilts his head so that he has no choice but to look straight at her.  
  
"Talk to me," she begs.  
  
xxx  
  
He doesn't tell her that, at first, he'd believed Nathan.  
  
It had made sense. It had been the only thing to make sense. What else would have prompted Nathan to...  
  
Duke shies away from the memory. Sufficient to say that he'd believed it.  Had accepted it, swallowed it down as an awful but probable evil, as he'd ushered Nathan out of the cramped bathroom  and into the living room. Had tried to push the consequences out of his mind, focusing instead on getting out the first aid box and coaching Nathan into stay still. Had even pulled away -- heart hammering half in horror, half in terrible anticipation -- as Nathan's blood had smeared across Duke's own skin.  
  
But nothing had happened. No rush. No high. Not even a flicker.  
  
And he'd reached out, grabbing Nathan's wrist with gentle fingers. Stared up at the stony face with the panicked eyes and waited until Nathan, predictably, looked away before cruelly pinching the thin skin on the inside of the man's arm. Watched Nathan blink, felt the arm twitch, heard the hitched breath. So no, not the Troubles.

Something else instead. Something inside of Nathan. Something fucked-up and wrong.  
  
xxx  
  
"You told Duke that you couldn't feel your legs," she says, peering up at Nathan.  
  
There's a woven blanket -- one of Duke's, colourful stripes and geometric patterns, smelling of the ocean and stained with red wine, warm but, she knows, scratchy against bare skin -- over his shoulders. He's stopped shivering, his fingers wrapped around a cup of sugary coffee. While she's not willing to sign up to Duke's theory she's seen enough in life to recognize and treat the symptoms of shock.  
  
"Can feel part of them," Nathan mutters. "Patches, here and there. Can feel you, of course."  
  
He's staring down at her hand and she squeezes her fingers firmly around his knobbly knee. It's been a long time since he'd looked at her like that. Not with hunger -- she knows what hunger looks like on his face, what eagerness and anticipation does to him, how it lights him up from the inside -- but with desperation.  
  
Duke slaps the back of Nathan's head, causing him to jerk forward and spill coffee over his lap.  
  
"Felt that too," he says, "didn't you, numbnuts?"  
  
"Duke!"    
  
The name shoots out loaded with all her frustration and fear, landing heavy and hard. Duke turns and stalks out, the tense plane of his back a clear _'fuck off'_ with the sentiment echoed by the door to the kitchen slamming shut. She turns back to Nathan and finds him picking at the wet stain on his jeans. He looks... a little less stone-faced, perhaps. A little more present. Duke's always had that effect on him.  
  
"Did you feel that?" she asks, reaching down to pull at his elbow. He stumbles to his feet, easy to lead and guide. Her Nathan, she thinks, the way she has at least a thousand times. Her stubborn, valiant, messed-up Nathan.  
  
"Sure, sure," he answers. "It's happening slowly this time."  
  
He shudders, the blanket sliding down his shoulders. She kicks it aside, leading him to the bedroom. Whether he can feel it or not, he needs to get out of the wet clothes. And it will give her a chance to see him, touch him. Reassure them both that he can feel her. That whatever has gone wrong it isn't stronger than what the two of them share.  
  
"This time," Nathan continues bleakly, "I'm going numb bit by bit."

This time, she's the one to shudder.

xxx  
  
There's a photo on the fridge of the three of them, taken a few years earlier around Christmas.  
  
The Duke in the photo has one arm slung over Nathan's shoulders while the other's wrapped tight around Audrey's waist. There's tinsel in her hair and Nathan's wearing an ugly ass knitted reindeer sweater. Duke remembers peeling that sweater off him later. Remembers Audrey's snorting laughter and champagne stains on the carpet. He stares at them now -- the still, snap-shot versions of one of the best Christmases he's ever had-- and wonders just when he became so damn gullible.  
  
Just look at that. Duke Crocker conning himself into thinking that he could have a normal life.

God, how Evi would have laughed at him.  
  
xxx  
   
Audrey undresses him like one would a child.  
  
She unbuttons his shirt and coaches him to raise his arms as she pulls off his t-shirt. Her fingers are warm and he drags himself out of the mires of his mind to pay attention to the way they ghost over his skin. He can't afford to do otherwise. Can't take it for granted, the way he had begun to after the Troubles ended. To think, all those nights he'd just allowed himself to fall asleep when he could have memorized the warmth of their skin against his.  
  
"Penny for your thoughts," she says and he shrugs, following her hands with his eyes.  
  
"Just wondering if Duke's gonna poison my dinner," he lies.  
  
They can hear him downstairs, slamming the cupboard doors and chopping ingredients as if they'd insulted his rust bucket of a boat. Audrey huffs, but stays silent as she pulls off his socks. Nathan looks away, as he always does. In many ways his feet, along with his joints, suffered the worst from his latest bout with his Trouble. Most of the toes had, at some point or another, broken. A few of them had then healed crocked, forcing him to tape them to avoid further injuring himself. Add to that the many missing toe nails and Nathan's just as happy to keep his feet hidden away.  
  
"Up," Audrey prompts, hooking her fingers through the loops of his jeans and tugging. He obediently stands up, fighting the urge to lean forward and wrap himself around her. Instead he settles for smelling her hair: inhaling deep enough to fill himself up with her scent.  
   
He almost misses the way she freezes.  
  
"Nathan," she says, and her voice is as harsh as it had been with Duke earlier. "What the hell is this?"  
  
Oh. Right.  
  
xxx  
  
When Audrey pushes past him, reaching for the half-empty bottle of red on the kitchen counter he can tell that she knows. He stirs the pasta sauce one last time, a perfect figure eight, before turning towards her. Hers is a difficult face to read; all open and closed at once. But he's known her for years now -- has known her as Audrey, as Lexie, as Mara, as Sarah, even as Lucy -- and he can see the anger in her jaw line.  
  
"Cracked," he repeats, raising his own glass of red towards her in a salute.  
  
"Don't," she warns, a touch of Mara in her voice. "He's not... he's going to be fine. It's just, he's just..."  
  
"He just decided to carve himself up like a Christmas turkey," Duke finishes for her. His eyes squeeze shut at the memory of blood trickling down Nathan's thigh. "It's not the first time he's pulled that shit either, and you know it. It was fucked-up back then and it's twice as fucked-up now."  
  
"He thinks he's Troubled again," she protests, eyebrows knitting together.  
  
"Oh, he's troubled alright."  
  
For a moment he thinks she's about to slap him. He stays still, knowing that he deserves it. Instead she just looks up at him, wide-eyed and furious and scared. It's like staring into a mirror. He's not sure who reaches out first but they're suddenly hugging, wrapped tight around each other.


End file.
